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Introducing the Individuals

Steve, sixty-four, Essex

Occupation: Retired insurance professional

Voting record: Usually Conservative, except when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and supported the SDP

Interesting fact: His focus in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re discussing evacuating people from the Korean peninsula because the DPRK have opened the missile silos”

Eva, twenty-five, the capital

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

Voting record: In her home country, New Zealand, she voted a combination of progressive parties

Interesting fact: Eva has worked as a singer on ocean liners; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a long time to be at sea

For starters

Eva: Steve seemed focused on enjoying the meal, to be receptive

He: She came across as a very intelligent, well-spoken, pleasant person

She: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, mushroom pasta, and a creamy dessert thing, it was very good

Key disagreement

Eva: He was certainly on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that British people who are native to the area, not just white British, face limited access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are entering. Whereas I just don’t think the figures are that bad

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I believe that governments have exploited immigration to occupy positions they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Wages are kept low, so taxes have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on child support, on education, on technology

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was sixteen and abroad when it happened. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He told me about EU labor migrants – candidates could arrive in the UK and only be paid the wage of the their nation of origin

Steve: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the system; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were imported; since then it’s been hospitality, farms. She understood that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was earning significantly higher than international colleagues

Common ground

Steve: It would be great to have a different energy source, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, I value fresh atmosphere, I love the countryside. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their energy revenues soared after the conflict began, they allocated those funds to develop green infrastructure

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s not a good way to go about things. He was in favour of continuing our own oil exploration for the limited quantity we’ll require in the future. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be advancing to greener solutions, windfarms and hydro

For afters

Eva: We touched on Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by radical ideologies entering – he did mention that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s prejudiced to make judgments based on faith

He: I come from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been gentrified. Naturally, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down that local market, I appear out of place. People stare at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word segregated area. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she doesn’t like that word, to her it implies deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I consented to substitute a alternative term – maybe community?

Eva: I feel like Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It appears a little bit discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

He: I think we parted on good terms. We had a hug at the train stop

Eva: We both said that we’d had a wonderful evening